It’s not often that a Simple 2000 game has recognizable – or even mildly appealing – characters. More often than not, Simple 2000 characters simply represent archetypes or attempt to imitate well-known characters from full-priced games. But when a game in this series has characters that are so appealing that they make one want to ignore the overall quality of the game, it’s clear that the developer has done something right. Such is the case with last August’s release of Simple 2000 Series Vol. 105: The Maid Uniform and Machine Gun – and, indeed, there’s a lot to ignore if one expects to have much fun with the game at all.
Monthly Archives: October 2006
Simple 2000 Series Vol. 99: The Genshijin
What makes a successful Simple 2000 Series game? Sometimes it’s a collision of original elements that have been refined over several games, often on other publishers’ dimes. Sometimes it’s a mere port or remake of a game that’s previously found success as a full-priced release. The well-executed, original, non-franchise title is a rarity among the rare good games in D3 Publisher’s catalog. However, the necessary alignment of heavenly bodies seems to have been just right for the release of developer Vingt-et-un Systems’ April release, Simple 2000 Series Vol. 99: The Genshijin, or The Primitive Man.
The Genshijin can best be described as a combination of Nintendo’s real-time-strategy-explorer Pikmin and Artdink’s bizarro caveman-sim Tail of the Sun. As the game begins, you control a diminutive monkey living in a small monkey-village. Your monkey is ever-so-slightly bigger than the rest of the monkeys in his tribe, and therefore is able to boss other monkeys around and lead them on sorties into the great wilderness outside. The monkeys in the boss’s party follow him in formation and act on the commands he gives. They can pick up food and artifacts, attack wild beasts with their monkey-fists, and work together to surmount obstacles (which are usually great slabs of rock that serve as gates between areas).